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Canberra Today 14°/19° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Moore / Exposing the silent, slimy and the sly

EXPOSING the secretive, sleazy underbelly of political tactics that so effectively undermine politicians, political parties, democratic principles and processes is virtually impossible.

Michael Moore.
Michael Moore.
The tacticians, those who dig dirt and those who back them, remain silent, slimy and sly about their shameful activities. A recent exposure of such tactics in NZ raises these questions about Australia.

Effective democracies support a contest of ideas and values. Personalities, persuasiveness and leadership all play an important role. However, when unethical campaigns rely on discrediting individuals through personal attacks, exaggeration, fabrication and sexual innuendo the very nature of our democracy is put at risk.

NZ seems a somewhat gentler, more polite jurisdiction than Australia. In many ways it is. However, this year it has also been exposed as the home of a sustained example of the filthiest, ugliest and most destructive of political campaigns.

While recently re-elected Prime Minister John Key had proclaimed in the 2011 election “there is no room for negative politics in NZ”, his backroom team were already working on destructive campaigning cheek by jowl with Cameron Slater’s Whale Oil blog.

The revelations from a large number of emails and online conversations, published in “Dirty Politics” by journalist Nicky Hager, blew the conduct wide open. Hager exposed the hidden underbelly of politics in NZ; rather than being seen to be negative, simply delegate attacks to people such as Slater.

The dirt on his blog was not just focused at the Labour Opposition, but was also directed at internal party politics such as pre-selections. His blogs were regularly picked up and run in the mainstream media.

Understanding the tactics provides an insight into some of the political shenanigans of recent times in Australia.

For example, whenever Julia Gillard seemed to get on the front foot she would invariably be undone by a scandal about the conduct of one of her ministers.

Subsequently, the focus would move to her own involvement in a union scandal with a previous partner. Even when the former Prime Minister appeared before the Royal Commission into the issue it became clear that there was no “smoking gun”. However, the innuendo, the doubts that had been sown about her credibility had done their work in undermining her position as Prime Minister.

Extrapolating to the Australian context from Hager’s book raises the question about where all the information on Gillard was coming from. Who was orchestrating it? Was it just one source? Who would be the winners and the losers?

The targets of the NZ attacks were not just politicians. Whale Oil remains a hard-right blog vigorously attacking anyone with different ideas. Even last week Cameron Slater was defending his blog from Hager at the same time as attacking climate change, obese people and socialism in Venezuela.

However, his most vicious attacks in the past have been on those receiving public funding including public servants and NGOs. Driven by the hard-right view of small government, Slater lumped these people/groups together as “Troughers” because to receive any money from the public purse was to have the “snout in the trough”.

More telling about the broad nature of dirty politics, as revealed in the NZ leaked emails, was the willingness to accept money to republish material from groups such as big tobacco and big alcohol.

In the NZ case Hager reveals that the money was apparently channelled through Katherine Rich in her role as chief executive of the NZ Food and Grocery Council.

Prof Doug Sellman was the subject of the sustained attacks. A university professor who, as head of the National Addiction Centre at the University of Otago, was a persuasive force in attempting to reduce harm associated with alcohol and tobacco. The attacks were based on innuendo, fabrication and distortion.

A similar set of attacks have taken place here in Australia in recent weeks on Prof Mike Daube, director of the Health Advocacy Institute and the McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth (a life-member and former president of my own organisation – the Public Health Association of Australia). The attacks have all the same hallmarks as those on Prof Sellman.

“Dirty Politics” provides demonstrative evidence of the direction that politics has taken over the last few years. It is an unhealthy direction for our democracy and one that should be exposed wherever possible.

Michael Moore was an independent member of the ACT Legislative Assembly (1989 to 2001) and was minister for health. He is the CEO of the Public Health Association of Australia.

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Michael Moore

Michael Moore

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